BBCSH 'Lament'
by tigersilver
Summary: When Sherlock is alone in the flat he still speaks to John Watson.


BBCSH ' Lament'

Author; tigersilver

Pairing: S/j

Rating: PG-13

Word Count: 3000

Warnings/Summary: When Sherlock is alone in the flat he still speaks to John Watson.

* * *

John's just stopping by at the old flat, at least that's what he tells himself on the train over. Mary's off out, at some do for the baby or other, and well…he's a bit at loose ends and it's this great aching gap in his chest he's maybe been trying to ease, all these weeks. Since Sherlock's been back.

And John's barely seen him.

But having his best mate dropping by the flat should be a bit of relief for Sherlock, yeah? Bit of break in this whole Moriarty debacle? 'Conductor' and all that. John's not forgot his old role, not a bit of it.

"Damn it, damn it, damn it, this is impossible! Inconceivable—ridiculous!" Sherlock shouts, one floor above him. John's used his key and been quiet as a mouse, creeping in just before the racket started. For if he knows Sherlock Holmes (and, oh, but he should know Sherlock Holms by now, shouldn't he?), the man's been going without sleep and is headed for a fall of massive proportions.

A kip on the couch, though, is clearly not the order of the detective's day; he's on a rant, not surprisingly. John ponders. Just the steps, then, and those manageable if one is familiar with the creaks-and-gullies. Best to keep to a low profile and let it blow over, right?

And grins wryly; he thinks he must've managed to have learnt something of Sherlock's ways, the sneaky and stealthy ones, when he edges up the steps upon hearing the vicious declaiming.

"I have never in my life—this is literally insane! I must get hold of myself!"

John snorts to himself, but quietly under his breath, and can't help but quirk up a corner of his mouth in amusement. This _is _a curious development.

"I am mad, mad, mad. Blithering idiotic! _Impossible_."

Sherlock is nothing if not a tad bit theatrical; John knows this and decries this and adores it all the same. It fascinates him, really. Truthfully?

"No, you're not," he mutters, but it's well under his breath and he's acting a bit like Mary now…no! More like Sherlock, pouncing on the unsuspecting and surprising the living daylights out of them. For? What reason this time?

John thinks he knows, that he's deduced it: Sherlock's in a snit over his supposedly dead nemesis, surely? But he'll solve, John is certain, dead certain. As certain as the sun rises.

The East Wind_ is_ returned, and John cannot help but feel secretly joyful. He has had to come here, come back to 221B; he's _had_ to come, there's no denying. As if there were a gun to temple, he's been compelled. 'Course, Mary would pitch a fit and perhaps go about slamming down the teacups unnecessarily hard on the kitchen surfaces for a few days if she knew just to what degree John is absolutely, madly, entirely wholeheartedly glad—and desperate. But then again? He's under no real obligation to tell her, is he?

Sauce for the goose and all that. No. No, _he isn't_.

"You think—you believe?" Sherlock is demanding of someone, someone quite unseen. It may be the skull, or the happy face wall or perhaps even an unnaturally quiet Lestrade. Even Mycroft, maybe? "You believe I have the words for this? This travesty, this mockery, this torment? No! No! Sod you! Oblivious."

Pausing on the seventh step up, John half expects to hear the Strad well up, shrieking abuse at Sherlock's unknown audience, but it doesn't. It doesn't; there is only silence, stepping off Sherlock's sneering hiss.

Silence, that is, excepting John can still hear—and that just barely, and really only more by the fact he knows Sherlock of old, and knows Sherlock so well—the sounds of various heavy exhalations and inhalations. Then too, sounds arising of quiet frenetic pacing, of bare toes slapping the ancient old carpet, of fingers ruffling curls to utter disorder.

"John." Another long pause and then—then, tentatively: "John?"

"John, what is I should do in this case? Why won't you simply tell me?"

'Sherlock?' John nearly calls out, peering in vain up the staircase. As if he could see his detective, in patent distress, and then make a few of his own deductions as to the cause of it. What a puzzlement!

It's not the drugs, John knows. No, Sherlock's spanking clean this time, really he is. Molly had told him off months ago—had slapped him; good on her!—and it had stuck. Also Mycroft would have Sherlock's hide flayed straight off his magnificent arse if his little brother dared tumble off the wagon after having been literally saved by absurd circumstances from the worst of all possible fates—that is, exile.

Fates…ah, the fates. John shivers instinctively, a trembling hand reaching for the banister.

Sherlock murmurs from above, more quietly, almost in a hush and sub-audial.

"John, John," Sherlock says, drawing out the sole vowel to a velvet rumble, gone all nasal over the 'h'. "Bloody John Watson, _Captain_ John Watson, Fifth Northumberland Fusi-fucking-liers John Watson, late of Her-Bloody-Majesty's John Wats—oh! And why late? Why not earlier—just a little? Just by a month or more? Would've—would've made such a difference, that. I would have had more time, John. To realize. To think."

_What_? John thinks, his lips parted and pursed on the questioning word, but yet cautiously silent. _Think what, now?_ Why ever would a month or two more of their kept company and flat-sharing made a difference to anything, anything at all? Why would Sherlock have wished to have met John earlier in his life, when really he should be much more concerned over the last little remnants of the Moriarty case right now?

"I'd have had time." Sherlock has clearly thumped himself down upon the couch. "A month more. Thirty additional days to have him….oh, John." The rustle of fabric and the scrape of clenched hands dragged across old leather, slick and slippery, confirm it, this world of despair John's best mate has accumulated. "John. To collect. To collect. _Them_."

_He_ makes no effort to explain what he'd've collected of John, but John advances up another step, breathing heavily, because he somehow knows what this is all about, now. Has a bit of an inkling, at least.

The sounds of Sherlock sulking are loud in the intervening air, at least metaphorically, but John find he cannot smile.

This _is_ a confession, isn't it? It's the one he rather expected and then never got, and it's bitter as the sigh Sherlock is likely blowing into a blankly uncomforting leather cushion and it's as unbearably lonely as the old flat has become, what with only one occupant, and it's howling to be heard nonetheless: a lament.

Eight steps, then nine, then ten. Softly. Softly!

John is consumed with a wild urgency but he's contrarily feeling mired in treacle.

"I am a fool," Sherlock tells the sofa, just as softly. "To hope." No one could've hoped to hear his voice speak that singular phrase aloud excepting for one very intent listener: John Watson, Sherlock's preferred audience, always. "Or to _not_ hope, rather? I don't know; how can_ I_ know, ever? Or take. To tell. To be selfish and foolish and more than a bit-no-good. So very, so very painfully, exquisitely…ah!"

Two very firm slaps resound as Sherlock bolts upright, his bare feet slamming the floor.

"But! I could take him, just reach and steal him away from that, from that—from Her. That's' always an option, isn't it, John? He _is_ mine—you've always been mine, John Watson, from the very first day and—and! It's bloody fucking unfair!"

This fierce proclamation of ownership has John halting instantly, frowning, for he is not, actually, Sherlock's possession. Technically he _is_ Mary's as technically he_ is_ married and from a far more rational angle he's the responsible one amongst all three of them and thus not in favour of outright infidelity, excepting? Who's the real infidel here? Sherlock, for coveting another's spouse? Or Mary, for seizing another one's beloved, knowing? A thief as well as an assassin.

"I. I know he is. All the signs, all the signals, all the tells, dear John Watson, stupid John Watson? They're all there, written all over you, every line of your face, your shoulders, your stance. And then—and then? Her."

John recalls the instant in the Guy Fawkes bonfire, sees it flashing before his inner eye, what Magnusson must've seen from his fucking aerie. Indeed, what huge wherewithal of taunting revelation Magnusson had had the balls to turn upon Sherlock—an arsenal of it, that. 'Smoked', indeed!

John had been lucky that day, excepting of course he hadn't, so much. Nearly literally from the frying pan into the fire.

Mary, then, for taking what had already been given over unwillingly?

"She is. My enemy, John. The worst one, the most evil, even more than…even more than that horrid maggot of a man."

Light dawns across John's furrowed forehead, wiping off the scoffing as if it had never been. This is face, this is evidence, and evidence makes no bones about outing liars. It must be Magnusson the detective's referring to, but—like Moriarty—Magnusson is dead and gone, and no longer a valid threat. Yet? This is none of it new information, what Sherlock's carrying on over, and—oh, right!

"Ma—ry. Mary Watson. Bloody Mary, my murderer—oh, John!"

Yes, it is, it really, really is. Blindingly new data, this. As if someone's turned a funhouse mirror upon John's life, upon _John's_ Sherlock, and revealed him to world all straight-out and unhidden at long last.

As if Sherlock has consented to stand before such a mirror unveiled and without making even a token effort to disguise himself. Naked and bared to the world, defenseless.

He eats his own sob without realizing it, for John has _never _heard Sherlock's voice so broken, so hitched, so shattered. It pains him fiercely, enough to send his toes clenching tight within their bounds, enough to have his hands curling to impotent fists at his sides. Someone has hurt his Sherlock and John doesn't like it at all; he likes it even less that is obviously _he_, himself, who's the culprit!

No one should be required to exist in such a welter of pain and yet its becoming clearer and clearer John's best mate in the world _is_. And hates it accordingly. Enough to speak it to a barren dwelling, where no whole heart can dwell.

"Like the watch beetle, she'll take you away from me, drain the life out of you, rot you alive in that fucking new flat of yours with wretched domesticity, with all the—all the mundane details, choking you!"

That particular heart's been broken long since. Torn and rendered into two jagged parts, separated by a too-long journey on the Tube and everything else that has come to pass prior.

There's a moment, when everything and everyone living in Baker Street freezes, from the cockroaches and the dormer mice to a thankfully absent Mrs Hudson, and John receives the distinct impression his old flatmate had ceased respiration entirely, ending that weird exclamation as he does on a hard-swallowed sob.

The strung-out moment is endless. As Sherlock's imprisonment after killing Magnusson must've have felt endless, as those four horrible minutes before the jet turned about was endless, inhospitably arid of all joy and overflowing with anguish unspoken.

John blinks up the dim stairwell, only just realizing he's begun to weep. Not sob, not descend into an unmanly hysteria, but only leave go of a saline drop or two, trickling painfully warm. A snail's trail of dripping wet empathy, for John, too, has known well e're now such profound sadness.

Such loss and _such_ loneliness.

"John? John! How could you settle?"

And John knows such a similar state of frustrated railing against the state of his shattered world, as well—far too well, in fact. He'd stupidly believed it could never be healed over, that the scar would stay fresh and stubbornly bleed over when he least expected it.

"How could you not wait for me—John?_ Oh_!"

It had taken a bomb to begin the disastrous separation of them, John-and-Sherlock, and John's realizing now that it had taken another one to repair the bond. That said, though?

John flushes, for he's hovering on the brink of disaster, in actually. Is he transformed to John Watson, the Not-So-Good, hiding and spying on what is clearly a private moment? _Define_, Sherlock would shout. _Don't be so vague, John! Is that trespass against or is it desired?_

"John!" Sherlock barks. In harsh reality. "Is that you?"

John nods. Automatically, which is bloody fucking stupid as Sherlock can't actually see him, not through a closed door. However, some tiny piece of John's reeling brain is still positive Sherlock can deduce he's bobbing his head furiously, speechlessly, uselessly, above all idiotically, and is consequently terribly proud of John's brilliant detective.

"Come up, then," Sherlock orders him, a deep rumble, nearly a growl. "Come up! I know you're there. John. Come up!" There's to be heard from the flat above the definite noise signatures of a tall gangly-elegant mad man springing gamely over the low table and making for the door. Ripping it open with a slam, to send a revealing spill of illumination down the stairwell. "John! What are you even doing, down there in the dark?"

(_If I had the words, John Watson_, John imagines this new [_not _new?] Sherlock telling him, earnestly, honestly, even brutally unvarnished in the way he always has. _If I had the words and was wont to use them, I would tell you _you_ are _my _miracle; that I can in no exist without you by my side always. That I am dying by degrees over every moment passing _She's _replaced me. That I would endure an eternity of those moments if it kept you safe. That I am forever thinking of you and sorting over every memory I do have of you, for they are precious, and my drug, my antidote; I have retained all of them. That I am an _imbecile_, a ridiculous man, but one who loves you beyond reason and rationality, and I find I can no longer bear it, this dull, tedious, _horrible_ life without _you_ in it—oh, my John! John? _Sherlock would gasp, reaching out as he whispers, pleads, begs_. Come to me?_)

John swallows hard, gulping down the snuffly mucus that's collected at the back his throat, and struggles to focus. It's the eleventh step, always tricky, always prone to squeaking and squawking. One foot on that and he's bloody sunk, isn't he? No denying it, that's he's been caught out half up and half down, half in and half out, and what then might happen? Mycroft's arch expression looms like a bloated corpse floating before John's dazzled gaze, nearly obscuring the impatient form of the real-life detective awaiting John's arrival.

That's not right, though, not a bit of it. John sets his jaws, firms his mouth into a thin line, and scrubs the back of a hand across his dampened face. He doesn't need the likes of Mycroft to sort this, not John Watson; he's had a better tutor than _that_.

He doesn't have time to spare for such havering, such pointless maundering, not now!

What _might_ John deduce? In the face of _this_ Sherlock; this mad, mad, mad man, revealed accidentally, who maybe, might, could be?—no, definitely—absolutely _yes-he-does_, completely, entirely, wholeheartedly loves John Watson?

John's ears burn red-hot, his heart's a'tumble, roiling, his kneecaps weak as over-boilt pasta, but he goes—oh, God, _he goes_.

(In John's mind's eye, then: up the six remaining, bolting them, with three steps at a single leap, then slam open the door all the way, toss his jacket off, who cares where, and storming his way into the parlour proper, invading, and then there'll be long arms there, magically wide open and welcoming, _and_ then there'll be a shy-and-teetering Sherlock-smile to accompany trembling musician's hands grasping too tightly, _and_ then there'll be lush impossible lips descending, _and_ then—words, words, glorious words, all the words John has ever wanted to hear:

'You came,' Sherlock _will _rasp gratefully into John's ear, ascending over the resounding thrum of John's pulse, his oddly brilliant eyes a'glitter with light, with purpose, with utterly divine _emotion_. 'You really, really came?' he'll say it again and not wait for an answer, and why should he? As its obvious: of course John will come. ' John—oh, John! '

'Of course,' John will say it aloud, feeling vastly stupid to have waited even this long, to have existed blinkered and muted by chance, by sly design, by the wicked machinations of others, but then again, not, as it's not as if Sherlock's left him much more than a faint trail of breadcrumbs, has he now? And John promptly kisses the beautiful bastard, as of course he has to, he must, Mary be damned. Of course he does do that—in fantasy. 'How could you doubt it? Me?'

John sees all this in a lightning moment, a _Eureka!_ moment, and while it's only one possible turn out of the many, the multitudes of what might come next in his life, what he might finally be given, and be grateful to receive, it's undeniably the future he craves, and thus…)

_He goes_.

"Just coming, Sherlock! Coming!"

**Fin**


End file.
